1. Field of the Invention
The present invention describes the preparation of back substitute products.
2. Description of the Art
Over the course of several years many attempts have been made to prepare tasty substitutes for meat products. These efforts have been made due to the combined forces of scarcity and the high cost of the meat. Soy beans have frequently been touted as an excellent source of protein and hence an excellent starting material for meat substitutes. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 3,999,474 issued Dec. 28, 1976 to Sienkiewicz et al., describes an apparatus for making simulated meat products containing vegetable protein such as soy isolate. Other meat substitute products have been formed from strands of alginates as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,627,536 issued to Arima et al. Dec. 14, 1971. Sources of protein for meat analogs include fish flour as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,047,395 issued to Rusoff et al. July 31, 1962, and beef by-products as described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,890,451 issued to Keszler June 17, 1975.
Albumin or eggs have also been suggested as a protein source for meat analog products. In this regard, see Canadian Pat. No. 872,186 issued June. 1, 1971 to Rispoli et al., as well as U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,320,070 and 3,840,677 issued respectively May 16, 1967 and Oct. 8, 1974 to Hartman and Leidy et al. The Canadian patent brings into vogue the possibility that a bacon and eggs breakfast will in fact be an eggs and eggs breakfast. While the foregoing breakfast menu may appear humorous, it must be considered that such a human dietary intake could present problems for persons having a known allergy to eggs. That is, while eggs are an excellent source of protein, their use in significant quantities in a meat analog restricts consumption to a large number of persons with such allergies.
A severe problem in manufacturing any simulated meat product and in particular a simulated bacon product is the taste of the product. For instance, pork flavoring by hog fat in a simulated bacon product using as a major source of protein, soy beans, is described in Canadian Pat. No. 536,911 issued to Schultz on Feb. 5, 1957. As previously mentioned soy does provide an excellent source of protein, however, when soy is used as the predominate protein in any product the unpleasant taste to one degree or another of the soy beans always comes through. Thus, until the problem of making soy beans taste other than soy beans is conquered the use of that material as a protein source for products intended for human consumption is severely restricted.
One of the more interesting approaches in the preparation of a synthetic bacon product is described in Food Engineering, Volume 49, No. 3, pages EF-8 to EF-10 (1977). The synthetic bacon product described in the foregoing article is formed from the ends and pieces of bacon. While this product would appear to overcome the taste difficulties involved in using soy protein, it must be remembered that the source material for the product described in the article is dependent upon the supply of real bacon.
An inexpensive source of natural meat for use in simulated products is poultry such as chicken or turkey. U.S. Pat. No. 3,917,860 issued to Ayres Nov. 4, 1975 describes the use of such poultry products including turkey to formulate a simulated ground beef product. The extraction of poultry protein by saline solution for use in preparing a compacted meat is described in British Pat. No. 1,452,434 dated Oct. 13, 1976.
The poultry meats have not widely been explored for use in bacon products largely due to the dry non-fatty character of the meat. That is, turkey meat is first not easy to process after cooking due to the fact that it is quite dry, and second, when attempting to make a bacon product the low fat content (approximately 13%) differs greatly from the high fat content (70%) associated with real bacon.
The present invention therefore describes a fabricated bacon product substantially comprising real meat, particularily turkey, having the texture, chewability, and taste of high quality bacon.
Throughout the specification and claims percentages and ratios are by weight and temperatures are in degrees celsius unless otherwise indicated.